Kaleidoscope 2: 2010 wk 31

8082010

Almost a year ago I started a new series Kaleidoscope, with a “kaleidoscope” of facts, findings, views and news gathered over the last 1-2 weeks.
It never got beyond the first edition. Perhaps the introduction of this Kaleidoscope was to overwhelming & dazzling: lets say it was very rich in content. Or as Andrew Spong tweeted: “Part cornucopia, part cabinet of wonders, it’s @laikas Kaleidoscope 2009 wk 47”

This is a reprise in a (somewhat) “shorter” format. Lets see how it turns out.

This edition will concentrate on Social Media (Blogging, Twitter Google Wave). I fear that I won’t keep my promise, if I deal with more topics.

Medical Grand Rounds and News from the Blogosphere

Life in the Fast Lane is the host of this weeks Grand Rounds. This edition is truly terrific, if not terrifying. Not only does it contain “killer posts”, each medblogger has also been coupled to its preferred deadly Aussie critter.
Want to know how a full time ER-doctor/educator/textbook author/blogger/editor /health search engine director manages to complete work-related tasks …when the kids are either at school or asleep(!), then read this recent interview with Mike Cadogan, the founder of Life in the Fast Lane.

And certainly don’t forget to submit your post related to medical information to the MedLibs Round (about medical information) here. More details can be found at Laika’s MedLibLog and at Highlight Health, the host of the upcoming Edition.(sorry, writing this post took longer than I thought: you have one day left for submission)

Dr Shock of the blog with the same name advises us to submit good quality, easy-to-understand posts dealing with science, environment or medicine to Scientia Pro Publicavia the blog carnival submission form.

There is a new on-line science blogging community – Scientopia, till now mostly consisting of bloggers who left Scienceblogs after (but not because of) Pepsigate. New members can only be added to the collective by invitation (?). Obviously, pepsi-researchers will not be invited, but it remains to be seen who will… Hopefully it doesn’t become an elitist club.Virginia Heffernan (NY-Times)has an outspoken opinion about the (ex-) sciencebloggers, illustrated by this one-liner

“ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd.”

Although I don’t appreciate the ranting-style of some of the blogs myself (the sub-“South Park” blasphemy style of PZ Myers, as Virginia puts it). I don’t think most Scienceblogs deserve to be labelled as “preoccupied with trivia, name-calling and saber rattling”.
See balanced responses at: Neurodojo, Neuron Culture & Neuroanthropology (anything with neuro– makes sense, I guess).
Want to understand more about ScienceBlogs and why it was such a terrific community, then read Bora Z’s (rather long) ScienceBlog farewell post.

Oh.. and there is yet another new science blogging platform: http://www.labspaces.net/, that has evolved from a science news aggregator . It looks slick.

Social Media

Speaking about Twitter, did you know that Twitter reached its 20 billionth tweet over the weekend, a milestone that came just a few months after hitting the 10 billion tweet mark!? (read more in the Guardian)

Votes down for the social media site Digg.com: an undercover investigation has exposed that a group of influential conservative members were involved in censorship, deliberately trying to ban progressives, by “burying them” (voting down), which effectively means these progressives don’t get enough “digs” to reach the front page where most users spend their time.

Finally for the EBM-addicts among us: The Center of Evidence Based Medicine released a new (downloadable) Levels of Evidence Table. At the CEBM-blog they stress that hierarchies of evidence have been somewhat inflexibly used, but are essentially a heuristic, or short-cut to finding the likely best evidence. At first sight the new Table looks simpler, and more easy to use.

[…] It has been long since I have posted a Kaleidoscope post with a “kaleidoscope” of facts, findings, views and news gathered over the last 1-2 weeks. There have been only 2 editions: Kaleidoscope 1 (2009 wk 47) and 2 (2010 wk 31). […]